[Almost no one who opposes the idea of U.S. government involvement in 9/11 has seriously confronted Crossing The Rubicon by Mike Ruppert. And sadly, many in the 9/11 truth movement who do embrace the notion of U.S. government involvement will not deal with Rubicon. This 9/11 report points to one notable exception to the latter, Bill Weinberg, and since Weinberg’s opinion was first published at Guerilla News Network, FTW is posting this story for free on our site because it will also be posted on the GNN site. While Weinberg did at least deal with the contents of Rubicon, his arguments are extremely fallacious as Michael Kane explains in this report.

Rubicon remains the most impeccably-documented and thoroughly-researched analysis of 9/11 but also the most ignored and least confronted. Unlike the physical evidence of 9/11, i.e. “Were there explosives in the buildings? Did a plane hit the Pentagon?”—evidence which has been destroyed and cannot be proven in a court of law, Rubicon reveals the military, legal, and energy-resource evidence behind 9/11 that cannot be tampered with because it is historical fact and could easily be proven in a court of law—IF there were any courts in the United States where such evidence could receive a fair and impartial hearing without sabotage or assassination. —CB]

October 9th 2006, 3:56PM [PST] – New York – Recently Bill Weinberg has trashed everyone who believes 9/11 was perpetrated by the U.S. Government in a report published at GNN.tv.

He makes some valid points regarding bad analysis and sloppy documentation put forth by some who claim to be 9/11 “skeptics” searching for “truth.” But where Weinberg falls flat on his face is in his evasive analysis of the most important area of research surrounding 9/11: The multiple 9/11 war games.

Unlike Cockburn, I respect Weinberg, and find him to be an intelligent and valid analyst of current events and history. There are even two tactics Weinberg uses in his report against official complicity in the 9/11 attacks that I respect.

First, he begins his argument in a way I have not seen used by our detractors in the past. He admits that official governmental conspiracies exist, and it would be “irresponsible not to consider the possibility that elements of the CIA and/or Bush administration had a hand in the events of September 11, 2001.”

Secondly, he does something no one else will do any longer when attacking those who say 9/11 was an inside job: He mentions Mike Ruppert.

Since Crossing the Rubiconwas published, all of FTW’s favorite detractors (Corn, Cockburn et al.) have shut their mouths, no longer mentioning our work especially as it pertains to the crimes of 9/11. They can’t dispute our case so they have no other choice.

Weinberg was brave enough to invoke the name that others now steer clear of, but he did not seriously challenge our case at all. Instead he focuses on minor disputes that he had with FTW’s Oh Lucy! timeline four years ago. These points are not in anyway central to the case against Dick Cheney as laid out in Crossing the Rubicon. The main point Weinberg drives home is over the interpretation of a French report published in Le Figaro. The report claims bin Laden met with CIA officials during his stay in a Dubai hospital shortly before 9/11. Le Figaro has never retracted the story. Weinberg says Ruppert translated a French word in the report incorrectly. Ruppert responded at length to Weinberg regarding this issue at the time, and his response was partially in French. Weinberg did not reprint Mike Ruppert’s response in full in his recent report; he selectively quoted from it.

Regardless of who is right in terms of such minutiae (I cannot truly say since I don’t speak French), this debate is meaningless and has no impact on FTW’s central case naming Dick Cheney as the prime suspect in the crimes of 9/11. To prove such a case in a court of law you must show MEANS, MOTIVE and OPPORTUNITY. When Weinberg finally does try to take a swing at our case in his report, he doesn’t even mention us!

Instead he uses Alex Jones’ extremely flawed and inaccurate analysis of the 9/11 war games as a straw man, easily knocked down. It is simple to win a debate on fact checking against Alex Jones, (Prison Planet) who has continually co-opted FTW’s investigation into these matters without ever mentioning our work or representing it accurately. Weinberg writes:

(Alex Jones says) “The CIA was conducting drills of flying hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning.”

But this last claim is not verified. In fact, PP’s own embedded link on the drills goes to its page delineating several Pentagon (not CIA) exercises scheduled for the morning of 9-11, including one (“Vigilant Guardian”) that concerned a multiple hijacking scenario—but none concerning “drills of flying hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon.” The only one which came close to “drills of flying hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon” actually concerned such a scenario at the Chantilly, Va., offices of the DoD’s National Reconnaissance Office.
The apparent fact of the Vigilant Guardian exercise is used by numerous conspiracy websites (such as the modestly named WhatReallyHappened.com) as evidence of an Air Force “stand-down” on 9-11. It is well-established (and not actually contested by PP or What Really Happened) that fighter jets were, in fact, scrambled from Langely (sic) Air Force Base in Virginia and Falmouth AFB in Massachusetts on the morning of 9-11. Why they failed to find the hijacked planes is a legitimate question, and it may have to do with confusion arising from Vigilant Guardian. But this is not the same as a “stand-down,” which the American Heritage dictionary defines as “a relaxation from a state of readiness or alert.” Yet “Truth” activists continue to espouse the “stand-down” as dogma.

Let me first correct the straw man lie from Alex Jones that Weinberg so easily knocked down. The CIA drill on 9/11 was headed by the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) which simulated an emergency response to an aircraft crashing into its headquarters at 8:30 am (precisely the time an almost identical scenario “turned real” at the World Trade Center and later at the Pentagon). This drill was coordinated with local law enforcement and emergency response organizations. So the NRO – the hi-tech headquarters for the CIA – was very well prepared to respond just in case a plane happened to crash into it on 9/11. Mike Ruppert wrote the following opinion regarding this drill on page 382 of Crossing the Rubicon:

The NRO is probably one of the top ten high-value targets in the country. Nobody (in the US Government or military) wanted it hit, but if the (9/11) plans went awry it just might be hit. Everyone knows that there are no guarantees when you start something this big. Things get out of hand; someone fails to follow the plan; loyalties change; people screw up their mission, the fog of war. It would be prudent to have the NRO drill underway, with police, fire, paramedics, and everything else there just in case. Good thinking!

All Weinberg has ‘proven’ is that Alex Jones is not a reliable source. That’s no newsflash to FTW readers. But what he doesn’t do is take on the documentation laid out in Crossing the Rubiconthat shows not only were there multiple, conflicting Air Force war games running on 9/11, but that Dick Cheney was in charge of managing them.1 The 9/11 war games created the opportunity for the crimes of that day to unfold as planned.

The claim by Alex Jones that drills were running on 9/11 for planes crashing into the Pentagon and World Trade Center is partially substantiated, although he manages to get the documentation wrong as usual. On April 18, 2004, USA Today published an article titled, "NORAD had drills of jets as weapons." The report cited NORAD officials who confirmed live-fly drills were conducted using hijacked airliners originating from the continental United States used as weapons crashing into targets including the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The specific drill USA Today referred to was "planned in July [2001] and conducted later" - likely on 9/11 itself when there were multiple scenarios being gamed.2

Weinberg says that the claim of an Air Force “stand-down” order issued on 9/11 is “dogma” to the 9/11 Truth community. That does not apply to FTW. Mike Ruppert starts off Chapter 19 of Crossing the Rubicon by explaining that the notion of there being a single “stand-down” order preventing fighters from being scrambled that morning is incorrect. Such simplistic analysis does not hold water. Planes were scrambled on 9/11, but only two sets of jets were available since the majority of air assets were diverted all across the world by numerous war game exercises.

Weinberg does admit the following:

Why they failed to find the hijacked planes is a legitimate question, and it may have to do with confusion arising from Vigilant Guardian

However, he states this in such a way that it gives the misleading implication that Vigilant Guardian was the only war game of significance taking place that morning. This is the false line maintained by the mainstream media when addressing the 9/11 war games.

Since FTW concluded our investigation, Paul Thompson, who runs CooperativeResearch.org, has discovered that yet another Air Force exercise was occurring on 9/11 besides the five laid out in Crossing the Rubicon: GLOBAL GUARDIAN.

According to Thompson this exercise, which simulates a “Global Armageddon,” is performed each year in October or November, but for some reason it was rescheduled for the week of September 11th in 2001.3 It is necessary to note that in May of 2001 – five months before 9/11 – Dick Cheney was placed in charge of the “seamless coordination” of all federal and military exercises related to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction by a presidential mandate from Bush.4 Placed in the position of managing all such operations, Cheney is the most likely person to have rescheduled this drill. He was in the perfect position to set up the opportunity for the crimes of 9/11 to be successful.

To prove guilt in a court of law you must lay out a case for MEANS, MOTIVE and OPPORTUNITY. That’s what Ruppert did in Crossing the Rubicon. In Weinberg’s assault on those who believe 9/11 was an inside job, he presents nothing that invalidates FTW’s case against Dick Cheney and other persons of interest in the U.S. Government and military.

I met Bill Weinberg back in the fall of 2004 when I was invited (in place of Nick Levis) to debate him and former National Guard pilot Tom Whisker live on WBAI 99.5 FM, the Pacifica Radio affiliate in New York. The debate lasted four hours. Whisker hosts a radio show called “Weaponry,” aired late night after Weinberg’s program, “Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade (MORC).”

During the debate we quickly got into the Air Force response on 9/11. When I proceeded to document that Mike Ruppert obtained confirmation of a “live-fly” (meaning actual planes in the air) Air Force exercise running on the morning of 9/11 Whisker said, “That’s impossible!”

I detailed that we know the name of the exercise – Vigilant Warrior – because former counter-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke named the exercise in his book, Against All Enemies. It was Ruppert who discovered that the term “Warrior” meant the war game was a live-fly field training exercise headed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This information was obtained via email from NORAD Major Don Arias. All of this is documented extensively in Crossing the Rubicon.

In responding to Whisker’s dismissal that the information I had just stated was “impossible,” I demanded it was true and documented – and it is. Weinberg then moved us on to another aspect of the 9/11 debate. He did not want to get caught up in the fine, critical details since there were so many topics to cover. This was just before Crossing the Rubiconhad been released. We were at a stalemate of sorts because all I could do was direct everyone interested in the debate to purchase the book when it came out.

Weinberg’s radio show, MORC, is often quite good, dealing with politics, art and culture from an anarchist perspective, and I have often listened. Upon meeting Weinberg and briefly chatting before our debate, he said, “This station (WBAI) has done a terrible job covering 9/11.”

He immediately gained respect in my eyes with that comment because it was – and is – all too true. Now Bernard White, who is managing WBAI into the poorhouse, is selling LOOSE CHANGE as the station’s main premium to entice new subscribers to donate money to WBAI. LOOSE CHANGE is a terrible ‘documentary’ on 9/11 that mixes truth with lies. White has made other questionable moves at WBAI like canceling Gary Null’s show. Null has pulled in as much, if not more money for WBAI than Amy Goodman during fund drives. But not all of Null’s politics fall in line with White’s, so he was canned. The American Left need not worry about “9/11 conspiracy theories” taking it down: It is proving to be very capable of suicide.

I agree with Weinberg that most of those who call themselves a part of a 9/11 “truth” movement are terrible analysts and reporters. But do not loop FTW into the analysis of those people and organizations unless you plan to really take us on – MEANS, MOTIVE, and OPPORTUNITY.

One thing Weinberg does not dispute in regard to Mike Ruppert’s case against Dick Cheney is the motive: Peak Oil. He is all too aware that we live on a finite planet and that Peak Oil is a reality the world will confront. Weinberg has much more in common with FTW than he may want to admit.

Shortly after the WBAI debate, I continued sparse email communication with Weinberg for a few months. Anyone who listens to MORC knows that Weinberg has sworn off of using the mass transit system in New York City, traveling almost exclusively by bike. I sent him a link (that I can no longer locate) of a plan for building enclosed bridges for transportation by bike alongside every major road in America. I had made a brief comment that such a proposal would never be embraced by Americans who are largely over-weight and out of shape. “But after Peak Oil ‘cuts the fat’,” I wrote, “Maybe this will be a viable option.” Weinberg wrote back to me:

“You should write for my publication instead of that charlatan Ruppert.”

I think that was our last exchange.

There is a part of me (my ego) that would like to issue a challenge to Weinberg and Whisker, calling for a “Round 2” of our debate. But I am not an historian, and 9/11 is history. Yes, it is critically important history, and that is why Mike Ruppert wrote a book of 600 pages and 1,000 footnotes to put this critical event into the proper context.

But FTW is done with over-analyzing 9/11. We’ve made the case, and no one has presented a serious challenge to it since it was published two years ago. 9/11 only holds a small fraction of the information that will help humanity understand the world we live in today and what is coming tomorrow. I am not a historical analyst. I won’t allow my ego to get in the way of doing my job any more than it already has.